When the child was a childIt walked with its arms swinging,wanted the brook to be a river,the river to be a torrent,and this puddle to be the sea.

When the child was a child,it didn’t know that it was a child,everything was soulful,and all souls were one.

When the child was a child,it had no opinion about anything,had no habits,it often sat cross-legged,took off running,had a cowlick in its hair,and made no faces when photographed.

When the child was a child,It was the time for these questions:Why am I me, and why not you?Why am I here, and why not there?When did time begin, and where does space end?Is life under the sun not just a dream?Is what I see and hear and smellnot just an illusion of a world before the world?Given the facts of evil and people.does evil really exist?How can it be that I, who I am,didn’t exist before I came to be,and that, someday, I, who I am,will no longer be who I am?

When the child was a child,It choked on spinach, on peas, on rice pudding,and on steamed cauliflower,and eats all of those now, and not just because it has to.

When the child was a child,it awoke once in a strange bed,and now does so again and again.Many people, then, seemed beautiful,and now only a few do, by sheer luck.

It had visualized a clear image of Paradise,and now can at most guess,could not conceive of nothingness,and shudders today at the thought.

When the child was a child,It played with enthusiasm,and, now, has just as much excitement as then,but only when it concerns its work.

When the child was a child,It was enough for it to eat an apple, … bread,And so it is even now.

When the child was a child,Berries filled its hand as only berries do,and do even now,Fresh walnuts made its tongue raw,and do even now,it had, on every mountaintop,the longing for a higher mountain yet,and in every city,the longing for an even greater city,and that is still so,It reached for cherries in topmost branches of treeswith an elation it still has today,has a shyness in front of strangers,and has that even now.It awaited the first snow,And waits that way even now.

When the child was a child,It threw a stick like a lance against a tree,And it quivers there still today.

And this is the poem spoken aloud in its original language by a native speaker. It means nothing to look at the words if one does not know how to read or pronounce German, but to hear them -- even if you do not know what they mean -- you can understand that the words are placed the way they are with the intention to create something beautiful.

German, to me, is a very naturally beautiful language. I can actually remember the first time I ever heard it spoken by people who had come from Germany. Oddly, it was at a rummage sale where my sister and I had reserved a space on the lot and were sitting there on a blanket with boxes of old books and toys we were selling. A man came by with his two sons and spoke to them in a language I did not recognize but thought was just LOVELY to listen to. Mopreover, I couldn't guess by their appearance what nationality they were, though in retrospect this is a bit ironic because the man and his sons all looked as if they had been genetically engineered to be examples of a perfect Aryan -- pale skin, blonde hair so bright it almost glowed, blue eyes, all of them looking fit and well-dressed... Mythical beings, really. I have only ever come across those traits before or since in Russians, only they all still had a distinctly Russian appearance somehow. There is a kind of appearance I associate with Germans, but it's less distinct, not all Germans seem to have it, and it's so vaguely-defined as to be close to impossible for me to identify it in women. At any rate, these three boys did not have it. I found it shocking when I asked if the gentleman would please tell me what language he and his sons had been speaking and he said they were from Germany. I had always thought that German was supposed to be a very harsh, guttural language -- something that is snarled more than spoken. It is so very much the opposite of that.

I urge you to listen to just a little of that video, just to get a sense of what this poem sounds like. Because that is as important as what the words mean sometimes. "Als das Kind Kind war" is a beautiful phrase. I get it stuck in my head the same way I get songs playing over and over. It's simply gorgeous.

This entry was crossposted from http://gethenian.dreamwidth.org/14053.html by means of a complex system of gears and levers run by a squirrel-powered perpetual motion machine and operated by volunteer Buddhist robots. The establishment thanks you for leaving all lolcat-themed items with the attendant dressed as a mince pie in the lobby before commenting. Ovaltine. Burma-Shave.